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You may have heard of strange natural phenomenon, but due to their rarity may have never had
the pleasure of experiencing them first hand.
While we can’t call forth some amazing events for you to witness, we can put together this
list of the ten strangest natural occurring events, complete with video proof!
10.
Suicidal Fish Ever have a fish jump out of its aquarium
to its death, making you believe you were the worst owners ever and that your precious
little Bubbles needed to end its misery?
Well, this may be the more extreme version of that.
Fish have been known to appear ashore en masse, but this video of thousands of Ikan Tamban,
or sardines, is a bit shocking and, for the villagers of Lahad Datu, probably a little
unsettling.
Dr. Saleem Mustafa, Director of Borneo Marine Research Institute at the Universiti Malaysia
Sabah, believes the event was a simple effect of oceanographic conditions and isn’t entirely
unheard of, but that doesn’t make it less bizarre, especially if you’re experiencing
it first hand.
9.
Rogue Waves With around 3 dozen suspected cases reported
as far back as 1861, rogue waves are considered a freak phenomenon believed to be caused by
the joining of waves or swells and have no known pattern.
These dangerous occurrences look like your average wave, just, you know, bigger and far
more threatening.
By the instances caught on camera, it’s easy to see the devastating effects of rogue
waves as they take seemingly no effort to topple vessels of all sizes.
A rogue wave is defined as a wave with a height more than twice the significant wave height,
a variable described as the mean of the largest third of waves in a region’s wave record.
8.
Frost Flowers They have a pretty name and are beautiful,
rarely occurring in nature, but don’t expect to go out picking frost flowers to give to
your beloved.
These unusual floral displays occur typically in autumn and early winter when thinly layered
ice is pushed out of plant stems.
The silky-looking ice flowers form cracks in their stems in freezing temperatures when
the sap begins to expand.
It’s through these cracks that the ice slips out of, curling in forms that look like flower
pedals.
Thanks to time-lapse technology, we’re able to see this phenomenon occur.
7.
Lunar Rainbow Who doesn’t love a good rainbow?
Iridophobics, that’s who; but that’s beside the point.
The point is if you love rainbows, you’re going to thoroughly enjoy catching a lunar
rainbow.
These night time rainbows, or moonbows, occur when the Moon’s light reflects and refracts
off of droplets of water.
It’s essentially the same process as their daytime counterparts, but there are more factors
involved that make them a rare phenomenon.
If the Moon isn’t on the verge of being full and is higher than 42 degrees from the
horizon, you can pretty much kiss your chance of seeing one of these beauties goodbye.
6.
The River of Sand Okay, so it’s not really a river of sand
that flowed through a region in Iraq in 2015, but many were probably fooled if they had
just watched the footage with no prior knowledge.
The unusual stream is believed to have been comprised of several blocks of ice which were
rapidly moving.
The river of frozen water was a product of a freak instance of rain and hail storms in
an area that is typically very arid.
What looks like sand is actually the hail that fell being washed downstream by the heavy
flow, creating the illusion of a flowing stream of desert.
5.
Ball Lightning This incredible natural event could very well
be the basis of a few UFO sightings.
During a 2012 thunderstorm in Qinghai, Chinese researchers were said to have caught the first
ever scientific recording of the rare phenomenon.
The ball of light appears as a glowing orb for less than two seconds, traveling approximately
50 feet or 15 meters before vanishing.
Ball lightning typically appears during a thunderstorm and is thought to be the product
of lightning striking the ground and vaporizing some of the minerals, causing a chemical chain
that forms filaments which then look like a glowing ball.
Most eyewitness reports of ball lightning state it lasts for mere seconds.
4.
Earthquake Lights Apparently earthquakes weren’t frightening
enough, so some of them start with imposing flashes of light in the sky, otherwise known
as earthquake lights.
Everything from UFOs to the Lord Almighty him or herself have been blamed for these
pre-quake flashes, but the very rare spectacle may be a bit less supernatural in nature.
While a mystery for quite some time, scientists believe they’re honing in on the cause,
believing that it all has to do with the electrical properties of rocks like basalt and gabbro.
When placed under stress, these rocks release electrical charges which can combine with
one another and form a plasma which eventually bursts into the air.
Psst, But you can still blame aliens, though.
We won’t tell.
3.
Brinicles Scientifically known as “icicles of death,”
brinicles are a strange and rare phenomenon that is actually deadly to some of Mother
Nature’s more helpless critters.
These underwater icicles form when salt is forced out of sea ice.
As the salinity of the surrounding water increases, it becomes denser and the ice begins to sink
until it reaches the seabed.
It’s at this point that the brinicle becomes dangerous.
As it touches the sea floor, webs of ice form and spread like a disease, freezing whatever
is in its path, including anything that may be trying to simply live their life.
2.
Exploding Rocks Humans are not the only things that can spontaneously
combust.
Apparently, rocks are prone to doing so as well.
Just like humans, Earth is known to “exfoliate” and shed its outer layer.
The process that leads to the impending explosion starts with the heating of surface rock, which
expands the hotter it gets.
As the night cools, the rock contracts and the process continues until the rock is weak
enough to crack and, as our friendly scientists in Tuolumne County, California learned, possibly
explode.
Though the explosions are not normally dangerous, this recorded event led to a crack in a nearby
dam, forcing Twain Harte Lake to be drained.
1.
Earth’s Trumpet If you happen to hear this incredibly unsettling
noise billowing throughout the sky, we don’t blame you if your first instinct is to run,
hide, and put on your aluminum foil cap.
Worry not, though; the boisterous trumpeting is not an invading race of aliens – that
we know of.
It is an extremely bizarre and amazing event that NASA believes to simply be “Ambient
Earth Noise.”
It seems like a fairly obvious non-answer as scientists continue to be stumped by Earth’s
trumpeting, so we might as well just sit back and enjoy the musical accompaniment that our
planet offers us from time to time.